Haunted

For those looking for a little Halloween entertainment over the weekend, the Windsor High School Band Boosters sponsored the Haunted Forest off Route 614 in Zuni Oct. 27-29. The event featured a hay ride and walking tour through the forest with witches and goblins galore. Proceeds from the event will be used for the purchase of new band uniforms.

In case you hadn't noticed, Halloween isn't for weenies anymore. Spooks have gotten spookier, scares have gotten scarier, and goblins have gotten ghastlier. In recent years, Busch Gardens has ratcheted up the fright-o-meter on its popular Howl-O-Scream event so much that the Williamsburg-area theme park has had to warn parents that they may not want to bring kids to park after dark. Following a public outcry last month about gory heads in a display promoting this year's Howl-O-Scream, the park removed "a group of five severed heads that was part of the Cut Throat Cove attraction," reported Daily Press sister paper The Virginia Gazette.

There's a junior version of the traditional Halloween haunted forest that's scaled for younger kids at Wayside Garden Center in Hampton. It's dark, with cobwebs, gravestones, spooky music and creepy sound effects, and is home to mechanical witches, plastic skeletons and lots of pumpkins. It's fairly short, suited to the attention span of its audience. At the end, it dumps the participants into a cheerier room filled with pumpkin-headed scarecrows with fanciful names. (If your child gets scared, duck out of the haunted forest and head for the exit to visit "Pumpkinville."

Hundreds of ghouls, goblins, pirates and princesses packed the streets of Downtown Smithfield Thursday night for Smithfield's Safe Trick or Treat. The event, co-sponsored by The Smithfield Times, the Smithfield Police Department and the Smithfield Historic Business District Business Association, drew a huge crowd, from infants in pea pods to an 82-year-old pirate wench. Business owners up and down Main Street in Smithfield transformed their shopfronts and handed out candy. Jim Abicht, owner of The Christmas Store, said his shop has been participating in the Main Street festivities for at least 15 years.

W-o-o-o-o! There's a knight in not-so-shining armor to greet you at the door, and rooms and rooms of ghouls, witches, bats and creepy crawly things to make your spine tingle on Halloween weekend. A haunted house has come to Smithfield, at last, thanks to the Real Smithfield Jaycees. It's the first time that a haunted house has been presented as part of the fall festivities in Smithfield, says Tim Stephenson, past president of the civic group. The idea seemed to be a natural, he adds.

Laurie Skinner, of Newport News, has spooked friends and family with her haunted houses for 16 years. Now, as president of the Peninsula Jaycees, she plays a big part in assembling the organization's biggest fundraiser - Newport Manor, a frightening and locally beloved haunted house. The Jaycees' haunted house is located inside of an empty storefront in Newmarket Square in Newport News. Guests wind through a handful of themed rooms encountering freakish characters and slimy scenery.

From terrifying haunted houses to kid-friendly costume parties and supernatural history lessons, celebrating Halloween in Hampton Roads is a real treat. The Peninsula Jaycees haunted house has returned to Newport News, even after their decorations were stolen earlier this year. Now you can see props from the former Haunted Harbor Park in Norfolk, which donated the materials to the Jaycees. A haunted forest in Smithfield turns fright into charitable fun, where the $5 donation cost supports Relay for Life.

This city after dark can be a pretty creepy place. Especially in October. The spirits of settlers, Indians, slaves and Civil War soldiers are reputed to haunt the city. With many colorful characters and a history as rich as Hampton's, it should come as no surprise that ghost stories are rampant here. Just about every household in Hampton has at least one copy of the collections of area ghost stories by Jane Polonsky or L.B. Taylor. My mother has always loved ghost stories.

I was puttering in my yard last week when a passer-by stopped and squinted up at my little house. He said his name is James and he lives nearby. "Is that house haunted?" he asked. Now, I've lived in my house for 16 months and seen nary a boogeyman, so I pooh-poohed the question with a laugh. "No," I said. "And I've been looking." After all, when you live in a cottage built between 1750 and 1780, you expect it to have a bit of an afterlife. You expect a few bumps in the night.

The 13th annual Poquoson Haunted House at the end of Poplar Road in Poquoson is open now through Monday. Cost is $5. For more information call Pat Taylor, of the Poquoson Woman's Club which co-sponsors the event, at 868-6529. The club, along with the Poquoson Jaycees and Boy Scout Troop #51, each year split the approximately $15,000 in profits for community service projects, Taylor says. Since this is their 13th - and possibly last - year running, the groups are planning a stellar performance, Taylor says.

It was a night like any other for Frank Green. As a career deputy with the York-Poquoson Sheriff's Office, he'd heard the rumors that Crawford Road was haunted. The road - spelled both "Crawford" and "Crawfford" on local maps - travels under an overpass of the Colonial Parkway. Supposedly, if someone turned their car off under the bridge and waited, a ghost would appear. Like hundreds of other nights while on duty, Green parked under the bridge and waited. And like every other time, he came up empty-handed.

Ashwood Assisted Living in Hampton has moved one step closer to losing its license to operate. Eighty one residents with various physical and psychological impairments, all dependent on state auxiliary grants, live in conditions that the state has reported as putting them "at risk for their health, safety and welfare" for more than two years. Three months after a May 30 hearing, closed at the request of owner Scott Schuett, hearing officer Sarah Smith Freeman sent her recommendation supporting revocation to the commissioner of the Department of Social Services for a final ruling.

Gov. Bob McDonnell ought to be spending the summer of his final year in office gloating over his accomplishments: making state government more efficient, championing fiscal restraint during a trying economy and getting a landmark transportation bill passed. Instead, he's fighting off publicity about his college kids raiding the larder at the Executive Mansion. In defending the actions, Mr. McDonnell's attorney compared the situation to the actions of his Italian mother, who wouldn't let him go back to school without "a cold meatball sandwich.

NEWPORT NEWS — At first glance, you might not think of the Boxwood Inn as a home of ghostly visitors. But for Kathy Hulick and the many guests she entertains at the bed and breakfast, feeling is believing. "The good news is we have nothing evil," she joked. Hulick and her husband, Derek, own and live in the three-story, 10,000 sq. ft. house that traces its history to 1897 as a hall of records, post office and general store. The Hulicks, along with Kathy's son, Josh Varga, and his wife, Rebekah Varga, took over the property in December 2008.

Has the spirit world taken up residence in your home or neighborhood? No? You sure about that? No eerie moans whistling through your hallways? No strange sightings on your local highways and byways? Nothing going bump in the deepest, darkest hours of night? You might want to think about that, because according to Pamela K. Kinney, Richmond-based author of "Virginia's Haunted Triangle - Williamsburg, Yorktown, Jamestown & Other Haunted Locations" (Schiffer Publishing, Ltd, 2011), there is nary a spot in our area that hasn't, at one time or another, been the site of some sort of paranormal activity.

Leave behind the monsters for some family friendly Halloween fun at the Virginia Living Museum in Newport News Saturday. The annual "Night of the Living Museum" event is designed for kids ages 12 and under with mad scientist experiments, live animal shows, a nighttime hike along the outdoor boardwalk, and a stroll through an enchanted forest, magical cave and pirate cove. Learn pumpkin carving secrets and dive into the habits of spiders with a special presentation. Kids are encouraged to come in costume and enjoy trick-or-treating through the event.

It's "Mission: Improbable," as mime Dan Kamin tries to get the Virginia Symphony not to play scary music for Halloween. You've heard of the man from U.N.C.L.E. And the man from G.L.A.D. Meet the man from N.I.C.E. He's nerdy Mr. Kirby from the National Institute of Children's Entertainment (N.I.C.E.), and he's trying to persuade an evil Virginia Symphony conductor not to play scary music and frighten the children. There's comedy afoot in the "Haunted Orchestra," the symphony's family concert for Halloween onstage Sunday in Norfolk's Chrysler Hall.

Bring on the ghouls: The Peninsula Jaycees' haunted house is officially on. Thanks to the donation of more Halloween props and decorations than the Jaycees could have ever hoped for, the nonprofit's annual haunted house is no longer in jeopardy, said Jaycees president Laurie Skinner. The items the Jaycees had been planning to use for their haunted house fundraiser were discovered missing Aug. 27 from the Chesapeake trailer company where they had been stored. It wasn't until the Jaycees prepared to reclaim the items - about $5,000 worth of materials including electrical supplies, lighting and special effects - that the theft was discovered.

HAMPTON - Margot Hall was watching TV last week when she heard that four people had been killed in Hampton. The camera panned to several houses. The neighborhood looked familiar. The houses were similar to the home of her friend Carla Williams on Ravenscroft Lane. She saw three rocking chairs on the front porch of the home where the victims lived. Just like at Carla's home. "I started calling her," Hall recalled. "Saying, 'Pick up the phone Carla, please.'" When she didn't answer, Hall drove to 43 Ravenscroft Lane.

It's been a year since a tornado carved a path of destruction through rural Hampton Roads, damaging or destroying hundreds of homes and leaving two Gloucester men dead and dozens of other residents scarred physically and emotionally. Recovery continues. Many of the residents whose homes suffered varying levels of damage still need to replace a roof, clear downed trees and patch damaged buildings. "We're getting back," said Roger Kanaday, who paused recently from mowing the lawn to survey his Gloucester neighborhood.